


Kepler's Third Law

by gettingby



Series: Battle Scars [1]
Category: Carry On Series - Rainbow Rowell
Genre: 50 percent of WS, Angst, Canon Compliant, Dirty Talk, Established Relationship, Goblins, Hand Jobs, M/M, POV Tyrannus Basilton "Baz" Pitch, Post-Book 2: Wayward Son, Prequel, Semi-Public Sex, Sex after fighting, except if you read battle scars, it's really not that angsty though, no happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-28
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-12 15:41:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29761878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gettingby/pseuds/gettingby
Summary: A run-in with a goblin in an alley gets Simon and Baz all riled up.
Relationships: Tyrannus Basilton "Baz" Pitch/Simon Snow
Series: Battle Scars [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2187390
Comments: 16
Kudos: 67





	Kepler's Third Law

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aralias](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aralias/gifts).



> Thank you for being a brilliant, endlessly supportive friend! I found this snippet from one of my earlier drafts of Battle Scars, fixed it up, and decided to post it for you, since you indicated some interest in the comments of that fic.
> 
> This is a prequel-of-sorts to [Battle Scars](http://archiveofourown.org/works/26994364) — if you want the happy ending, give that a read after :)

When social media companies design an app, they focus on a concept called unexpected gratification. They want their app to be as addictive as possible, and the best way to do that is to provide a rush of dopamine…but only once in a while. And at unpredictable intervals.

This is what Simon Snow has been doing to me.

Or, I suppose, the circumstances surrounding Simon Snow.

Of course, I’ve been addicted to Simon for a long time. Practically since we met. He’s always set my neurotransmitters haywire. The rush of adrenaline in my body when I caught him staring across the dining hall. Serotonin when I caught sight of a smile or a laugh. And the intoxicating burst of dopamine when I riled him up enough to put his hands on me - not the way I wanted, but I craved his touch so viscerally that anything could set me alight.

I thought once we kissed, I could douse that flame. That I could plunge myself deeper and deeper into my own desire until I finally extinguished the constant hum deep in my belly, an insistent reminder that I didn’t feel whole, not really. A magnetic pull towards Snow that wouldn’t abate until we’d wrapped ourselves so close together that our very molecules were indistinguishable from one another.

But our physical relationship has been unpredictable, to say the least. And because I’m a masochist, and because nothing could ever dim my ardor for Simon Snow, the erratic progression has only driven me wilder with want. I was desperate before - now sex is the only thing I can think about. I’m gagging for it every minute of my miserable life.

My boyfriend is the sun and I’m inescapably, hopelessly in his orbit.

I bite down both my words and my actions. I don’t want to reveal my hand or drive him away. When I think about sex, I’m filled with a fiery shame not unlike when I first started sneaking off to the Catacombs. I want so much. I always want too much. My lust and my bloodlust are two sides of the same coin, both terrible and omnipresent.

*

The goblin’s decapitated head hasn’t even hit the ground before Simon’s hands are on me, pulling and grabbing anywhere he can find a hold. My mussed hair, my bloody silk shirt. He drags me deeper into the London alley where we were ambushed and shoves me against the grimy brick, his mouth on mine, his tongue plunging deeper and more insistently into my mouth.

I cede immediately and instinctively. My body expects it now, to be hit with the full force of Simon after every battle. Ever since America, this is how it’s been between us. Doesn’t matter if it’s a goblin, a vampire, or a power-hungry mage. Hell, even a numpty with a grudge would be enough to get Simon going.

We spend our days in London like we always have, Bunce and I going to uni, trying to keep Simon afloat and off the couch. Things were worse - much, much worse - when we first came back from America. But they’ve gone back to normal in the past few months (which I never thought I’d be grateful for). With one notable exception - this. This bizarre ritual we have after every fight. Lips and teeth and skin.

I moan, loudly, wantonly, as Simon goes in on my neck, biting and kissing furiously, mumbling worshipful curses into my jawline. “So beautiful,” he whispers, running his teeth past my jugular. “So dangerous,” he breathes as his tongue traces my clavicle. He gathers my hair away from my shoulders and into one fist, tugging gently. I tilt to give him better access to my neck, and take the opportunity to tangle my fingers in his curls. He growls in satisfaction as he sears furious kisses behind my ear. It sounds louder than before, only because he’s so close to my ear, when he groans “Can’t believe I get to have you. Can’t believe you’re mine.”

“I’m yours,” I gasp. “Always.” He growls and kisses me on the mouth, hard.

I wonder if he talks to his therapist about this. I wonder if I should talk to mine. I’m not sure how I would bring it up. _“I get hard anytime I see a shadow jump, because I think we might get attacked and then I’ll finally get off with my boyfriend.”_ That surely won’t do. Even if it is the truth.

“Wand,” I breathe, “I’m going to spell us,” and Simon nods, pulls it from my pocket and presses it into my hand. I cast **nothing to see here**. We do that, after the third time drunken tourists took a wrong turn and saw Simon and I with our hands down each other’s pants.

Simon’s wings snap open then, knocking some bottles out of an over-full bin nearby. It must feel amazing to stretch them after a long day of having them spelled invisible and tucked in, because he groans into my mouth and kisses me even harder. We’re in a red, leathery tent now, shielded from the rest of London, in a world just for the two of us.

His hands are clasped together at the small of my back, his thumbs caressing me tenderly, his palms cushioning me against the roughness of the bricks. We’re both hopelessly hard and I’m pushing back against him, trying to get more contact, more friction, anything.

I’m weak against the raw, graveling want of his voice. I drop any resistance immediately, allowing my body to fall limp against the wall. Simon hums approvingly against my mouth and tugs my shirt out of my trousers, making short work of my belt. He isn’t strong enough to hold my hips down when I thrust up into him, but he tries. Crowley, he tries.

It isn’t just that I want to get off. Because I do, don’t get me wrong. But it’s just seeing Simon like this. Looking at me like I’m the center of his universe. Like he can’t take his eyes off me. Like he’d rather die than stop touching me. I can’t control myself when he looks at me like this, even if it only happens after we’ve finished killing something that wanted to kill us. (If I thought I was disturbed before, I had no idea how much.)

I don’t know how to tell him I love him, not with words or with touches. I don’t think I’m allowed to, not in either of those ways. So I take everything that I feel and I compress it, smaller and denser, and hide it. So that I don’t scare Simon away. Except times like this, when he seems like he wants to know. Then I let it out and I don’t think about what will happen if it’s too much for him. I don’t feel ashamed of how open I am in these situations. All I’m thinking about is how I’d do anything for him, to make him know that he’s cherished and loved.

These are the only times that I think he doesn’t hold back with me, either. At first I wasn’t sure whether he believed the things he said to me when we were like - this. If he was just flattering me because he wanted to kiss me, or run his hands down my body, or rut against me until we both come. But now, I think he does. I think he’s just trapped so far below the surface of his own mind that these times - when he’s coming down from battle, when all he’s been thinking about is not dying and the other thoughts haven’t had time to come back and hold his brain hostage - these are the only time he can be honest. About me. About how he feels about me.

I remember every gasped phrase. There’s a running list I have of them, in my head, that I repeat to myself on the nights when he shrugs me away and turns his head and won’t let me look at him. It’s the only way I survive this, I think. I wasn’t lying when I said I’d loved him through worse. Those times, I got through it by cataloguing every flush of his neck and tensing of his jaw. Every half-sputtered comeback, every kick and punch. Now that we don’t fight anymore, I get through it with - this. The memories of Simon’s mouth on me. The proof that when he lets himself, he still wants this. Wants me.

“You’re so fucking ruthless, Baz,” he’s saying now, as he pulls my pants down and takes both of our cocks in hand in one fluid, sudden motion. I still haven’t come down from my adrenaline high, and it makes everything sharper, every nerve ending on edge. Looking for a threat, ready to pounce. Achingly sensitive as waves of pleasure crest through me. “So fucking ruthless and so fucking hot for me...”

He swallows my moan against his own lips and thrusts harder, against his own fist, against my cock. “Love getting to see you fall apart. Love making you come for me.”

That’s all it takes for me, embarrassingly enough. I get so worked up now during a battle - my mind going through strategy, keeping track of the enemy, while at the same time I imagine flashes of what will come next. My arousal intensifies so that by the time Simon is on me, I’m already so hard, I’m practically dripping. I want Simon so badly that it barely takes anything to drive me over the edge.

Simon’s holding me tenderly now, rubbing circles into my back, clutching me so tightly as if he’s drowning and I’m his buoy. He keeps rutting against my thigh, and I’m too blissed out to reciprocate, but he doesn’t seem to mind.

He bites his lip, hard enough to draw blood. (But he doesn’t, which I’m glad for. I’m in enough of a depraved state that I might actually lick it off.) Then he’s coming with an animalistic moan that I should find off-putting, but I completely don’t. I tip my lips towards him at the same time that he reaches for me, and then we’re kissing - still desperate, as if even though we’re physically sated, some part of this is incomplete.

And then it slows. Grows leisurely, and then I feel like I could cry because this is what I want more than anything - the languid, loving kisses and post-coital embrace. My heart is bursting, I feel like I’m in free-fall. I’m dizzy with it, and the words are on the tip of my tongue. _I love you, Simon Snow. I’m in love with you. You’re the sun, and I’m crashing—_

The sound of a bin lid falling startles Simon away from me. A rat scurries away, possibly the same one that I half-drunkenly chased here in the first place, and Simon clears his throat, does up his flies, runs a hand through his hair.

Now I’m falling, but it doesn’t feel good anymore. Now I don’t have a parachute.

“We should go,” he says, and he doesn’t meet my eyes the rest of the way to his flat.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Check me out on [tumblr](http://www.im-gettingby.tumblr.com)!


End file.
